by Sean McFate
He could have given answers confidently. Cited numbers proficiently. Yes, this was the right pipeline station. Yes, this was the right time. He’d done his homework, that was why he had spotted the opportunity. He knew the cubic liters of gas involved, of course, but he was much less clear on the ramifications on the interlocking global market and industrial infrastructure of a postunification austerity EU, not to mention the internal politics of an oligopoly like Ukraine, where only money mattered. The bankers knew that. They kept a spectacularly stiff upper lip, but they were men of the world. They knew any numerical discussion was speculative at best, so they didn’t bother.
It was the idea that mattered. The idea on a broad level, not in the specifics.
Ukraine was a Gordian knot, an interlooping factional hive of actions, threats, and consequences. The West had been trying to unravel it for years, decades in fact, even before the Cold War or the Russian Revolution. And what do you do with a Gordian knot?
You don’t untie it. You slice through it, as quickly as possible.
The idea had come to him two days ago, like that legendary sword through that mythical rope. He knew Karpenko was only half an answer on his own, but he had seized the opportunity after the assassination attempt in Poltava. It was a time-tested strategy: bring in the player, put him in motion, figure out how to use him later. Bringing in Locke from outside the conflict zone was equally orthodox. Locke was the perfect combination of excellent at his job and unknown, at least in Russia and the Eastern Bloc.
Align the pieces. Apply pressure. Look for the angles, as he had always done. Push with a steady hand. He had engineered the assault on the facility, the Donbas Battalion, Karpenko’s press. He had done the same many times before. He was doing it in other parts of the world right now.
But then, for the first time in his life, he had burst through. He had flashed onto a masterstroke and gambled on intuition.
Why were the Russians guarding the pipeline facility? To protect it. From whom? From everybody. And what your enemy fears most: that is your greatest asset.
Anyone can play the odds. But you can grasp the moment, Winters thought, only when you’ve mastered the game. When you’ve studied all the moves; when you understand them in your bones.
It was a long rise from being the only white kid in that poor black neighborhood in south Baltimore, with his broken family and his hippy single mom. Altar boy, even though he wasn’t religious. Principal’s pet and “special project,” even though he wasn’t well behaved. Then the army. It broke his mother’s heart, but she signed the enlistment papers when he was sixteen, and that was when he lost respect for her, when she supported him in something she despised. Officer School. Airborne. Wall Street. Private banking. Ivy League MBA, even without an undergrad degree. The Pentagon. Back to Wall Street. He caught a lucky break when the planes hit the Twin Towers, because he was already in the private military business, but he had worked it from there, making himself not just a beneficiary of government largesse, but a creator of it. He devised the policies, through the K Street two-step, that put armed contractors on the ground. Then he cashed the checks.
But this was different. This was beyond money, beyond the place where people were impressed by billions. He had felt it the moment Karpenko introduced him to the London bankers. There was another layer, a deeper level of power. Anyone could turn a billion dollars into ten billion. But how many could shape the next century? Rothschild. Carnegie. Rockefeller. Prescott Bush, but not his offspring. Jobs . . .
The bankers were insiders, workers for those who moved the world. And like all employees, they had expected a business plan. Instead, he had given them a solution. Ukraine can struggle on for a generation, savage and inefficient, or we can change the dynamic. Force the pussies in Europe to act, as self-preservation. Force the Americans to strike the death blow to Russia they should have delivered in 1992. He would break Eastern Europe, he might break the continent, but in the end, he would remake it, exactly as it always should have been.
And then, as he neared the final moment, the bankers had changed the game.
Winters sipped his orange juice, feeling the jet throttle back for its initial descent. He looked out the window, past the blinking light on the tip of the wing. It was dark, but beneath that darkness, and those clouds, was the place he had never anticipated going, at least not on this trip.
Russia. The home of the enemy.
Great men develop great plans, he thought. Truly great men can improvise in the arena, even when they don’t know the rules. Are you a truly great man, Brad Winters?
He laughed to himself. You’re about to find out.
At least he’d been smart enough to hide an ace up his sleeve.
CHAPTER 45
The rusty fishing boat bobbed in the Black Sea, which on this night wasn’t living up to its name. The moon was waning gibbous, almost full, and it threw a bright path of light from the boat to the horizon. It was so bright, Jacob Ehrlich could see the patterns of their nets in the water, rocking on a gentle breeze.
The moon didn’t matter. There wasn’t anyone else out, not this deep. Ehrlich had been out here every night for the past twenty days, and there never was. He had taken this job for the adventure, but he had quickly realized it was even more boring than sitting in a motor pool, changing the oil on Stryker combat vehicles. At least it was thirty days on and thirty days off, with twice the pay of a warrant officer.
He turned back to his work, running his scanner over the wing of the drone, then the body. Usually, his primary duty was to make sure the cameras were in place and working. They were worth more than the drones, and besides, it wasn’t any good to send spy drones over Ukraine and the Balkans if the cameras weren’t in proper order. Apollo Outcomes had some sort of overlook contract, tracking troop movements, probably, although Ehrlich didn’t know. He didn’t even fly the things. That was done thousands of miles away in Michigan, if the rumors were true, or maybe Minnesota. He never even saw the footage. He just maintained, launched, and recovered them from this rusty scupper.
Six a night, every night. Always the same: except for this one.
“It’s a banger,” Johnson said, as he finished his inspection. Johnson was the other tech, and the only other company man on the job. The six fishermen were locals, hired for cover and trained in firearms. Ehrlich didn’t entirely trust them, but he assumed Apollo paid them well. More than they could make fishing, anyway.
“Previous generation,” Ehrlich said. “Not as fast, but at eight thousand feet, still invisible. And I guess they don’t have to worry about pretty pictures.” There were no cameras on this drone, but it had a special nose cone, bulkier than any he had ever seen.
“I wonder what’s up?” Johnson said, nodding to the cone.
“None of my business,” Ehrlich shrugged. “I just get them in the air. You clear?”
“Clear,” Johnson said, stepping back.
Ehrlich looked at his watch. They were eight miles south of a remote stretch of Ukrainian coast, and it was midnight on the dot, as specified. He punched in the launch code, telling the boys back in Michigan the bird was ready to fly. Maybe if he had realized the nose cone was a blasting cap filled with a pound of C-4, and that almost fifty pounds of C-4 were laced through the interior of the drone, making it a bomb big enough to blow up a building, or an entire factory, especially one filled with natural gas, he would have paid closer attention.
But he didn’t, so Jacob Ehrlich didn’t think anything of it as he watched the massive drone bomb lift into the air. Thirty seconds later, it was invisible, even in a moonlit sky.
“Bring up the next one,” Ehrlich said.
CHAPTER 46
Almost three thousand miles away, the Gulfstream-V corporate jet touched down at Pulkovo Airport outside St. Petersburg. It was 0100 local time, three hours ahead of London and one hour ahead of Ukraine.
The door opened, and Brad Winters stepped off. He had never been to Russia. He’d never
done business on this side. The Berlin Wall had come down decades ago; Wall Street had arrived five seconds later; but in the mercenary business, there was a barrier between East and West. Apollo would work for almost anyone, anywhere, if the mission and money were right, but it had never worked for the East. Putin was an ex-KGB officer; he had his own private armies. And he was the enemy.
But Russia was warmer than he expected, at least for May.
Below him, a black sedan pulled onto the tarmac and parked four feet from the airplane stairs. Winters walked down and got inside. There was a man in the backseat. Early forties, neat as a military bedsheet, clearly British from the cut of his hair to the lack of a chin.
“Welcome, Mr. Winters,” the young man said. Young for private banking, old for private equity. He must be out here in the hinterlands, Winters figured, working his way toward the London office.
“Thank you, Mr. . . .”
“Everly.” They didn’t shake hands. As soon as Winters’s bag was loaded into the trunk, they started moving.
“I’ve been briefed on your plan,” Everly said. “You are here to communicate it to our contact on the other side, Mr. Gorelov. Have you ever dealt with Russians?”
No comment on the plan, Winters noticed. Everly knew the company rules. “I’ve met a few,” he said.
“They are tough,” Everly said. “Blunt, even by American standards. You are not here to finesse the details. Nor are you here to negotiate. You are here to break legs. I understand you are a military man . . .” Everly looked at him for the first time and smiled, although it looked pained, due to his lack of chin. “. . . I assume you know what I mean.”
Ambush him. Keep him in the kill zone. “No offense, but what are you expecting from this?”
Everly side-eyed him. It was as close to an emotion as the banker’s had ever given him. “You’re the first person that’s ever presented a plan for Ukraine that might work. That has . . .” the banker searched for the right word “. . . testicular fortitude. We expect you to convince them, just as you’ve convinced us. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” He didn’t. Not entirely. But he was working on it.
“Good. The meeting is at 5:00 A.M. It is 1:09 A.M. local time. I will take you to a room. I advise you to get some sleep.”
0500 St. Petersburg time. 0400 in Kramatorsk. That left only two hours before the Donbas Battalion was scheduled to arrive and four, maybe, before he lit his secret weapon and blew Russia’s excuses, not to mention her precious gas lines, into a fireball half a mile high. If it came to that. And Brad Winters was finding that, increasingly, he hoped it did.
“Not much time,” he said.
Everly smiled, sort of. “Pressure,” he said, “is our ally.”
CHAPTER 47
I stood over the sand table, a five-by-eight-foot mock-up of the gas facility and surrounding area that Miles and I had created on the warehouse floor, as Miles gathered the team. As the noncom, it was his role to call the men to order. As officer, it was my role to devise and brief the plan. We weren’t strict about protocol in Apollo, but the team was former military, and old ways die hard.
It was a big group. The seven men on the team: myself, Miles, Charro, Wildman, Boon, Jacobsen, and Reynolds. Then Greenlees, looking a thousand years old. And the three Ukrainians: Colonel Sirko, Maltov, and Karpenko, who had come out of the back of the warehouse, where he had been talking with Alie for most of the last hour.
He’d convinced me not to cuff her and, reluctantly, I’d agreed. Now, with Maltov’s men on guard duty and Alie falling toward an exhausted three-in-the-morning nap, I was happy he’d talked me out of it. He was taking care of her, just like he’d promised, so I could keep her off my mind. I wasn’t particularly happy to have Karpenko at the sand table, but it was the client’s prerogative to sit in on the plan meeting, and we had a good working relationship. I knew he’d respect my authority on military matters. But . . .
“Only the principal and team members,” I said, pointing my broken broomstick at the pilot, who was skulking over Karpenko’s shoulder.
Karpenko turned and snapped something in Ukrainian. The pilot started to object, but Karpenko took him by the collar, pulled him close, and muttered something that made the man turn pale.
“‘One more word, one finger,’” Greenlees translated in a whisper to Miles and me, as the pilot backed away.
I locked eyes with Miles, and I could tell he was impressed. Karpenko knew when it was time to get down to business, and he could swing the hammer. If I wasn’t mistaken, that hammer was Maltov. Maybe Winters was on to something. Maybe Karpenko was the right man for Ukraine.
“This is the target,” I said, pointing with my broomstick to the bricks and cardboard that denoted the facility. The sand table looked haphazard—bricks or concrete chunks for buildings, cardboard and other scraps for walls, copper wire for the tangle of natural gas pipes—but Miles and I had rendered every distance and size as carefully as possible, since lives depended on accuracy. Of course, when I wasn’t looking, Wildman had painted the words “slags KIA” at the spot where he took down the three thugs and tricked up one of the wooden block “cars” with a racing stripe. I had to laugh. Soldier humor was puerile, but important. Every unit needed a clown.
“This is north,” I said in my command voice, pointing. “East. West. South.” I touched each one.
“North is fallow fields. No good avenues of approach, if they have thermal imagers. East is the same. On the south is the industrial park and two entry points, each with a metal security door: one vehicle, one pedestrian. Parking lot in the southeast corner. Road along the front.” I traced it out. “Fifty meters of open space between the road and two industrial buildings, here and here. Two-story industry buildings along these three blocks. Apartment buildings here, including the tall one where Wildman set the camera. Good for overwatch, but be alert for slags.”
I glanced at Wildman. He was nodding, looking serious, as if I was simply recounting useful information, but a couple of the other guys laughed.
“You all know about the pub thugs here,” Miles said, taking the broomstick and pointing to the club we had hit a few hours ago. “So far, they are scared back into their hole, but we should avoid this part of the AO.” Area of operation.
I took back the stick. He who has the stick has the floor. “Inside the facility are pipes, a small equipment warehouse, and a control building. They are surrounded by a six-foot brick wall, with embedded broken glass and rusty concertina wire on top.” I traced the wall with my pointer. “The entry points are monitored by closed-circuit cameras and floodlights here, here, and here. We are ghosts. We are not here. We avoid the entry points and lights unless our lives depend on it.”
Only Karpenko nodded. It was standard operating procedure for the rest of us.
“The enemy are Spetsnaz.” I paused and looked at the men. That word had gotten their attention. No joking now, except for Wildman, who was smiling like this was the funny part. “Random three-person foot patrols inside the facility, no discernable time or pattern. Single-man overwatch from this roof.” I tapped the control building. “Also random times. It’s designed to look sloppy, right down to the fake militia uniforms, but it’s highly professional. Miles and I estimate a squad-size element, as many as twelve men, although only three have ever appeared outside at the same time. They are heavily armed and well trained, but bored and not expecting us. Those not on patrol will be here”—the control building—“probably on the first floor, but that’s best guess. We have no eyeballs inside.”
Nodding. Half blind was not ideal, but common.
“There are two civilians on the overnight shift. Engineers. They are monitoring the pipeline from here, the control building. They are to be unharmed and incapacitated. We’ll hand them over to the Donbas Battalion on linkup, and they won’t see the light of day until the operation is over.” Meaning the press has departed and Karpenko is a national hero.
; “Got it boss, no molesto,” Wildman affirmed. “Civilians sleep like babies tonight.”
What did Wildman know, I wondered, about babies?
“The facility operates 24/7 and the day shift starts at 0700. Workers arrive as early as 0630, so we need to have the little green men flex-cuffed by then or we’re fucked. Questions?”
Silence.
“Good. Our objective is to capture Russians. I repeat, capture not kill.” I tapped the copper wires. “Fire discipline is paramount. One stray bullet here, and . . .”
“Kaboom,” Wildman whispered, like it was a forbidden love.
“Kaboom,” I agreed.
I looked around. Everyone was alert, especially Karpenko. His eyes were gleaming, and he was grinning like a carnivore.
“At 0430”—I looked at my watch—“that is two hours and thirty-three minutes from now, we move out on foot, and approach the facility here.” I traced our route from the factory to the facility’s northwest corner. “Use available concealment from the surrounding forest and BMNT.” Before Morning Nautical Twilight, military speak for twilight, a good time to catch unaware soldiers in their rack.
“We scale the wall here,” Miles said, taking over the tactical portion of the briefing, “on the far side, where the pipes come out of the ground. Locke and Charro carry the folding ladder. Charro, once the ladder is up, I want you to cut the wire and lay the blanket over the glass.” Miles tossed him a thick wool blanket, scrounged by Maltov’s crew.
“Boon will fly the drone, so we’re not blind.” Earlier, we’d had tryouts to see who could walk and fly at the same time. Boon smoked everyone. Jacobsen almost flew the damn thing into a tree.
